Books by Len du Randt

Wednesday, 1 August 2012

On writing The Incubus

When my wife and I had a miscarriage in 2004, we both
mourned our own way. While she cried, I tried dealing with my inner turmoil and
emotions by writing. The result of that is The
Incubus.

Some of the events that happen in the book are loosely based
on real life things that either happened to us, or people that my wife and I knew
back then. I always wanted to write a ghost(ly) story, so when things started
to go bump in the night at the place we lived then, I drew on that for
inspiration. Where some people might shriek when things start moving around, I
used those moments to figure out how I could work it into the book. The
nightmares that Justin had were all mine and the light fixture that almost fell
on Rebecca’s head nearly smashed to pieces on my wife’s head in real life. It
was a strange time in our lives, but we got through it just fine.

No. We didn’t meet any angels (fallen or otherwise) to my knowledge,
but we did manage to overcome our own inner demons.

Just like The Son of
Perdition, both The Incubus and Succubus were also rejected by pretty
much every publisher in South Africa, Australia, the UK and the US. In a sense,
I’m actually glad that no one published them. I quite like the excitement of the
e-Self Publishing journey and it would not have been possible to do so if the
rights resided at some publisher in Helsinki or whatnot.

I initially planned a trilogy with The Incubus and The Succubus
being the first two in the series, but after writing The Succubus, I realised that they stand much stronger as just the
two books. I’m polishing the sequel for Kindle now and if all goes well, it
should be on Amazon around mid-September this year.